Big question is whether the owners will trust Manchester United manager with
£100m in the summer

Ed Woodward may have been capturing for posterity the moment Manchester United plumbed new depths in Europe when his camera phone flashed seconds after Robin van Persie’s late miss at the Karaiskakis Stadium.

Had the Dutch forward’s effort gone in, with United trailing 2-0 against Olympiakos, it would have transformed the entire complexion of this Champions League last-16 tie.

But in keeping with his and United’s season, Van Persie sent his shot high and wide and the clock quickly ticked down to confirm a defeat which ranks among the club’s very worst in Europe on what was their 250th appearance in this competition.

This was bad. Think of all the puns you like about ‘Greek tragedies’, United’s hopes ‘being in ruins’ and a ‘bankrupt team leaving a bankrupt country,’ but none of them cover the full extent of the paucity of the United’s performance.

Mike Edelson, the director sat alongside Woodward in the picture, is holding his head in his hands for good reason.

When Sir Alex Ferguson’s United were humiliated by Jesper Blomqvist and IFK Gothenburg in 1994, it was not as bad as this.

And the opponents were better when United lost to Lille in Paris in November 2005 and then again against Basle in December 2011, when a 2-1 defeat saw Ferguson’s team crash out at the group stages.

Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman and the man who has daily contact with chairman Joel Glazer, has endured the bumps and bruises of his first season in charge of the club in tandem with David Moyes, the manager struggling to keep his head above water as Ferguson’s successor.

So far, there has been no wavering in Woodward’s support of Moyes and the only talk has been of what will happen in the summer, with vast sums of money being promised by the Glazers to rebuild a squad bequeathed by Ferguson which looks in greater need of repair than the Acropolis this morning.

That backing remains and rather than place Moyes in the firing line, the sense around Old Trafford is that the end of the season cannot come quickly enough for the long overdue surgery to begin.

But while £100 million or more may be spent by United this summer, the performance in Athens suggested that war-chest may not be enough.

Nemanja Vidic is leaving, Rio Ferdinand will follow him out of the club and Patrice Evra, who has an option to stay, may also go.

Ryan Giggs is another, Anderson has been farmed out to Fiorentina on loan, unlikely ever to return, and the likes of Chris Smalling, Tom Cleverley, Javier Hernandez, Ashley Young and, on this performance, Michael Carrick, may find a P45 heading their way at the end of the season.

There will be plenty of pain at United this summer, but a valid question that must now be asked is whether Moyes has done enough to be entrusted with the scalpel and the chequebook.

His decision here to leave Adnan Januzaj out of the squad in order to avoid burnout was admirable, but simply the wrong time to do it, with United’s season hanging on the outcome of this tie.

United, out of the FA Cup, have no game for 10 days, so even a callow 18-year-old could manage ninety minutes here with over a week to recover.

Marouane Fellaini, Moyes’s big buy last summer, impressed in the weekend victory at Crystal Palace, yet he was omitted in favour of Cleverley, an honest, but limited player who was out of his depth until replaced on the hour by Shinji Kagawa.

Moyes has handed over his list of targets for the summer and Woodward is now charged with bringing them to the club, but the Glazers are unlikely to sanction another £100 million spending next year if this one does not work.

As Roy Keane suggested in his brutal post-match assessment of United’s performance, Moyes was dealt a dodgy hand by Ferguson with an ageing and tired squad.

But Moyes could have acted quicker last summer, made big calls on big personalities who have subsequently let him down and been more decisive in terms of players he targeted.

The Scot takes it on his shoulders and accepts responsibility, but if the players continue to fail him, he will know that the end result is usually that the manager pays the price first.

He now needs Woodward and the Glazers to be stronger than his players.